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If you go down to the woods today…

Hi guys, my delve into the world of The Chapel continues with more twisted trees to join the three test pieces that I did a few weeks back. My pal Ross donated those test pieces assembled and primed, and having now built my own, my gratitude to him has doubled! They are a pain to do – wonky bits, poor fitting in places, fiddly mold lines all over the place… but, they are still pretty good fun 🙂

Anyway, I picked up two sets and decided pretty much straight away that I wanted to convert a few for a bit variety. I ended up doing one normal tree, one extra tall tree and one stump per pack, (the leftovers from the stump going on top of a tree to make a tall one). The hollow stumps had a cup moulded and sculpted inside, and I added a load of skulls and gore – the suggestion being that this is where debased forest folk pledge their sacrifices to the Albino Wytches. The skulls came from a number of kits and there is actually quite a range of sizes involved, which gives the rather macabre impression that men, women and children are all potential sacrifices.

In terms of painting, I tried to mirror my test pieces but I couldn’t remember exactly how I did them, so there is a bit of guesswork involved. That said, they are pretty close. I also tried out some cheap brown acrylic paint I spotted in WH Smiths for the base coat – it’s almost the same colour as Dryad Bark, (if a little shiny), but it worked well once all the drybrushing & washes were finished. Here’s a few pics:

I have plans to use the many leaves that come with the kit to make some low shrub-type scatter terrain – the bark will be white again, and I thought a dark red for the leaves – I know it’s a bit of a Game of Thrones cliché, but it will look rather good I think. I’m going to buy more of these sets, but I’m struggling to think of other interesting ways to convert them… If anyone has any ideas, requests or suggestions, please add a comment below!!

Finally, I have made some progress on my not-exarch based on some of the feedback I got… I think I need to bulk up the cloak around the shoulders, and the fur needs to be a bit more wild looking, but he’s moving in the right direction I think – savage but not evil, strong but not bulky… Thoughts?

26 thoughts on “If you go down to the woods today…”

Cheers Warbs, yeah, I’m happy with the way the Exarch is shaping up – I’m looking forward to getting some paint on him! As for the trees… well, it’s hard to get too excited about them as a subject I suppose, but they do need doing so I might as well try and make ’em interesting 😉

Whoa man! The tree are the bomb. Really F-ing cool. I like that you’ve converted them to give more variation. I want to get some too but they’re so expensive over here. I really like the stump carved out and filled with skulls. I also like the little details like the candle in the tree. Red leaves would be cool. Blood red. I also think, if you can do it, another tree that is splitting open with corpses spilling out of them. Make it the biggest and most macabre tree of the bunch. The Eldar is looking good too mate.

Thanks mate, and yeah! I really like the corpse-tree idea! It would be tricky to make it a great deal bigger than normal because of the way they are made, but I reckon I can get the idea of that across… lemme have a think on it 😉

Loving those woods – any chance of the recipe for how you painted them? Would be good to try and get my woodsy-stuff as close to it if I can.

Really like IRO’s suggestion of the corpse tree, do you remember the Hag Tree GW converted around the time of the last beastmen release? It was everywhere for a while but now my google-fu is struggling to find a picture. If I can source one I’ll link to it though, might give some inspiration.

Then there’s the potential to mix in a few Sylvaneth/tree man parts. Perhaps some larger tree-devils but rather than being awake and prowling the woods, the trees are still, their human components apparently asleep. Shhh… Tip-toe past adventurers… Do not disturb!

Thought about popping the odd skull into the empty sockets in the trees (the ones that are left where branches aren’t attached)?

Brilliant, thanks for the pointers mate – your Nurgle tree rocks! I love the idea of an ambulatory tree… maybe combining that idea with IRO’s idea of a corpse tree – a tree that kind of creeps around gobbling people up. I also thought of skulls in holes, but that seems a bit tame in a way… maybe have people alive & trapped in the trees, with just their faces showing?? That’s nastier I think, and would work well with zombie trees 😉 Also, couldn’t find the Hag Tree (please share if you find it!), but I did find the excellent Malifaux Hanging Tree set on wheeebay, and that’ll fit right in. Happy days!

My recipe is as follows – Base coat with Dryad Bark, drybrush with Tallarn sand, and again with Baneblade Brown. Wash heavily with Agrax Earthshade & dry overnight.
Drybrush with Baneblade Brown again, and then the next bit is a bit odd… I mixed a half pot of white with a half pot of medium to get a really runny white. I kind of do a wet drybrush (if that makes sense), so the white sort of stays to the raised bits, but it is transparent enough to let some of the base colour through so it doesn’t matter too much if it wanders. I then dab-paint another coat of the runny white just on the raised bits to strengthen the white in those areas. A final wash of Camoshade at the base and branch junctions completes the job.
The rocks start out with the same browns, but are then drybrushed Eshin Grey, up to Administatum Grey before a wash of drucywhatsit violet. I use dabs of Ryza Rust & Nurgle Green for the lichen, a final light drybrush of grey on the edges, and then a very light wash of Agrax and/or Camoshade to tone it all down…. Phew! It sounds like a lot of effort when you write it down, but it really is just drybrushing & washes 🙂

Regarding the Creeping Corpse Tree that’s very much how I imagined it, crawling around the woods on a mat of crawling corpses, all working together like a hive. The older bodies are slowly being consumed by the wood whilst new ones are added from any unwary travellers it comes across.

Cheers for the ‘how to’ I’ll see how I get on applying it when I get started on some woodsy creatures of my own.

Awesome, thanks mate, that really is a really cool idea! I’m kind of leaning towards a dense mat of roots and stuff for it to move around on, and a hollow trunk with splits in the side to show layers of decomposing corpses… kind of a top-loading walking compost heap! 🙂

It’s all looking so superb! Your work on the Albino Woods is awesome and the trees are exactly the way I thought they’d look and as for your pesky Eldar, he’s coming on really well and I’m looking forward to killing him, when the time comes 😉

That Eldar figure is really coming along. The banner in particular looks great. I think though that the heads on his belt are too large… maybe replace them with skulls? Skulls aside from being smaller, would also work better with the color scheme, balance it out a bit.

The trees are looking great too, and reminds me that I have a box of these in the garage that I really ought to get to.

Thanks ‘Packer, glad you like him mate. You’re right, the heads are a tad large, but don’t know whether skulls would be a bit Deathjestery or Reaperish… I think I’ll put it down to the primitivness of the mon-keigh cranium 😉 Glad you like the trees too – they’re fiddly whotsits to do, but quite good fun!